Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1: what's the Korean for 'curve ball'?

I've been going on a fair bit recently about the inevitability of new product announcements. By the time most smartphones or tablets have officially been announced, we've already seen them in countless leaks and rumour pieces.

So well done to Samsung by catching us totally on the fly with its revamped Galaxy Tab 10.1 announced in Florida a couple of days ago. We're experiencing something we seldom do when dealing with new products: surprise.

We've wondered before about the wisdom of having three different generations of Galaxy Tab mulling about at the same time: the 7in Gingerbread Flyer announced last year, the bulky 10.1in Honeycomb version launched at MWC in February and the new slimline 8.9in slate we knew was launching this week.

But Samsung is one step ahead of us now, having announced an unexpected refresh to the 10.1in version at the same time as announcing the 8.9-incher.

We genuinely didn't see it coming. More recent events have revealed just why Samsung only had the plain Android Honeycomb OS running on what we must look now as a prototype Galaxy Tab 10.1 seen in Barcelona: it was still waiting on a version of Google's OS it was free to modify.

But there's something else going on here, too. It's only a couple of weeks since the world's tech press were all over quotes from a senior Samsung exec saying the company would have to look at its pricing structures in the wake of the iPad 2's launch, and maybe even go back to the drawing board to match its super-slender profile.

Now, it takes more than a couple of weeks to achieve that, so the possibility is surely there that Samsung was having one big joke at our expense.

But given that we now have a range of good-looking tablet rivals on the horizon all offering great features and technologies at highly competitive prices, what's not to smile about?

Hmm, well what concerns me is that I was all for their comments on rethinking their price structure (these manufacturers HAVE to realise they are pricing far too high) however now they seem to have gone back and redesigned the tablet to "beat" the ipad they will probably now think that justifies staying with their original price point which is too high.

The iPad had firmly established itself in the tablet market, nothing priced in the same price range will be able to unseat it no matter how many "ipad killing" specs that they cram in, they only way they can compete is to reduce the price. Undersell the iPad by £100 - £150 (i.e. price at £299 - £250) and they will be taking the fight to apple, im just hoping that the recently announced ZTE tablet (of the budget ZTE Blade smart phone fame) will lead the way with a budget Honeycomb tablet and that the other manufacturers will fall in line.

Also last comment, I dont like this push for thinner is better, make it a little thicker and put a larger battery in please, lets get a tablet than can run for longer than the iPads 9-10 hours, now thats something to brag about...